If you don't have the equipment to make sushi, onigiri is pretty much the same but easier to shape.
Here's a quick recipe of the kind I make:
Ingrediants:
* Japanese-style rice. I use Calrose brand. Each onigiri requires about a cup of cooked rice.
* Nori seaweed (used to wrap around the base when you're done, sort of to hold it so you don't get your fingers all sticky. The pre-perforated kind is easy to use.)
* Salt
* Soy sauce
* Fillings. I use bonito flakes (aka dried tuna shavings) just moistened with soy sauce or plum sauce, and flaked cooked salted salmon (you can buy the salmon in the meat department of fred meyers and probably other stores, pre-packaged in an air-tight pack.
--- Cook the rice and let it cool enough to touch it without burning your hands. (Sometimes I add some soy to the rice. Sometimes I don't depends on the flavor I want.)
--- Flake the salmon in a bowl (or pour a little plum sauce onto a small bowl of bonito flakes depending on which one you're making)
--- Keep a bowl next to you of cold, lightly salted water. One big enough to dunk your hands in.
--- Once the rice has cooled enough to touch (you want it still very warm though) dip your hands into the bowl of water and then grab some of the rice. Press it into the palm of your hand and make a little indentation in the middle to hold the filling.
--- spoon some of your filling into the middle of the rice in your hand, and then put a little more rice over the "hole". Then shape the rice into a ball or triangle around your filling. (A variation of this that I do sometimes with the soy sauce rice and the salmon is just to mix it all together and shape that rice mix into a triangle - super easy and very yummy!)
--- when your rice ball/triangle is done being shaped, take a strip of nori seaweed and wrap it around the shape either all the way around, or halfway. Whatever your preference.
--- Then after placing it on a plate, dunk your hands again in the cold salted water and repeat!
